Sinn Fein this afternoon announced that it is setting up anArd Chomhairle sub committee to run the party's campaignfor a yes vote on the constitutional referendum onchildren's rights. The group will be headed by JoanneSpain, from the party's children's policy committee andcandidate for Dublin Mid West and will include Mary LouMcDonald MEP, Caoimhgh¡n O Caol in TD, Aengus O SnodaighTD, Sue Ramsey MLA and Waterford Councillor DavidCullinane. The group will hold its inaugural meeting inLeinster House tomorrow, Monday 26th.

Speaking prior to the meeting Joanne Spain said:

"Sinn Fein believes that the bulk of the proposals putforward by the government represent progress in terms ofchildrens rights and on that basis we will campaign for ayes vote and will be encouraging all parties to facilitatethe holding of the referendum no later than the generalelection date this summer.

"Contrary to some media reports that the opposition wantthe referendum to be confined to the protection of childrenfrom sexual predators, Sinn Fein welcomes the proposals toinclude children's rights, custody, care, guardianship andadoption. In fact we would like to see it go further.

"At our meeting tomorrow we will be discussing amendmentswhich Sinn Fein intends to put forward in an effort toensure full human rights compliance and the best possibleoutcome for children. We will specifically be seeking aprovision ensuring that the best interests of children willbe paramount in all actions concerning them.

"The Government's proposal does fall short of a Sinn Feinproposal in 2005 for a new article to be inserted into theConstitution expressly detailing children's rights andbased on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.However Sinn Fein will support this referendum on the basisof progress for children albeit limited."ENDS

THE Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) is two weeksaway from its biggest rally ever in Washington, D.C.,according to the group's executive director Kelly Fincham.

"The hard work that ILIR has done this past year is reallybeginning to show across America. Everyone wants to go tothe rally on March 7," Fincham said.

"We're even getting calls from people who are planning tomake it a family outing," she added, referring to some whohave family out to visit in March.

Fincham said the real success behind the lobby day would bedown to the incredible amount of effort and persistence ofthe various ILIR chapters nationwide.

"We owe a tremendous amount of gratitude to the organizersof all the events that have taken place and are coming up,and to all the people who are on the ground trying to getpeople to Washington," she said.

In just over a year, ILIR has grown into the largest activeIrish American organization in the country. Mary Brennan,who has been involved since day one, has seen a huge growthin the organization and is delighted to be involved inmaking history.

"It's grown like something else and now were heading backto Washington for a third monster rally," she said.

The Bronx office already has 500 people signed up to leavefrom the Bronx, Yonkers, and upstate New York. "It's stillearly days and we also keep hearing about people who aredriving down and making a trip out of it," Brennan said. Itis also expected that more people will sign up after theNew York ILIR dinner dance on March 2.

"We know from past experience that several people will signup at the last minute and we will get a huge crowd belowthere," Brennan said. Although the numbers won't be finaluntil the day of the rally people in the community arekeyed up and emotive about March 7.

If people wish to sign up for the Bronx and Queens busesthen they are advised to call the ILIR office at 914-420-5894.

Deirdre Hickey in Queens told the Irish Voice that over 160people in her borough have already put their names down totravel to Washington.

"The response is great to date," she said.

The Queens ILIR committee plans to use strong-arm tacticsthis weekend when they go to the bars in the area and re-inform people about the rally and persuade them to attend.

Hickey, who knows that people are aware of how importantthe lobby day is, said the Queens committee just wants torefresh their memories and make sure that they get on thebus.

"Everyone we spoke with has been following it in thenewspapers and have all given us their word that they willattend, so we're pretty positive on numbers and reallylooking forward to a very successful rally," she said.

After a successful fundraiser held in Philadelphia lastFriday, the local committee there has pledged to send 1,000delegates to Washington. Tom Conaghan, executive directorof the Immigration and Pastoral Center of Philadelphia,said that no one wants the Irish community to die in theirstate.

"The loss of one's community would be a terrible tragedy,"he said. "This is our big push and we expect everyone thereand we're getting good vibes from people telling us thatthey will be attending."

The Philadelphia GAA will also be sending a delegation tomeet with senators and representatives on

the day in an effort to push immigration reform. Conaghanfeels passionate that people, both undocumented anddocumented, especially previous winners of green cards,should get out to Washington on the 7th to participate inthe fight for legal status for the estimated 50,000undocumented.

Referring to last year's election results, Conaghan saidthat in Pennsylvania voters took a stand against anti-immigrant politicians such as Senator Rick Santorum, andnew seats were won by pro-immigrant voices such as SenatorBob Casey.

"The likes of Casey will help us especially when they seeus at their offices in Washington," he said.

Conaghan urges anyone who hasn't signed for Washington todo so soon by calling 610-789-6355.

Hughie Meehan from the Boston ILIR committee is veryconfident that they will be sending over 500 people to theCapitol.

"At the minute we have about 250 people registered to godown and then tonight (Tuesday) we have anotherregistration taking place in four different locations," hesaid.

Meehan is hopeful after Tuesday's registration that theywill have over 400 people signed and sealed. "We also havea banquet on Friday night where we have 680 peopleattending so we hope to rally up a few more at that," hesaid.

Meehan said that the response in Boston has been wonderful,and he knows from past rallies that several more will signup for the bus at the last minute. "I think the weekleading up to the event will see more and more peoplesigning up for sure," he said.

To sign up with the Boston office people are advised tocall 617-319-1674.

Celine Kennelly, executive director for the IrishImmigration Center in San Francisco, told the Irish Voiceon Tuesday that the response has been phenomenal since thesuccessful ILIR meeting in the city on February 1, in whichHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a message endorsing ILIR.

"Since that meeting the phone has literally hopped withpeople wanting information on traveling to D.C.," saidKennelly.

The San Francisco chapter of ILIR has over 170 peoplesigned up to go to the rally, departing to on Tuesday,March 6 and arriving at 7 a.m. on Wednesday. Most of themare booked to fly back that night.

"That's incredible dedication for you," Kennelly said."People who have booked flights to go are all paying anaverage of $300 per person. Some got lucky with a lowerrate and others who had to dig deeper to pay for theheftier flights up in the $500s, but everybody is payingfor their flights out of their own pockets. It's beenamazing."

Several Morrison and Donnelly visa holders who can't go toWashington have given money to pay for others to attend.

"People are really energized, they understand that afterworking on this for a year their civic involvement isextremely important, thus giving them an vital input sothey can make a difference," Kennelly said.

The pastoral center in San Francisco, who has acted asticketing agents

for booking flights to Washington to date, urges people tocall them at 415-752-6006 if they are still interested ingoing to Washington.

Fincham said the event is also getting attention fromformer members of ILIR now back in Ireland.

"I'm also getting about 40 calls a week from people inIreland who are wondering when they will be able to comeback into the country. It really is phenomenal," she said.

The recent benefit hosted in its hall in Monroe by theAncient Order of Hibernians Division One raised severalthousand dollars. The purpose was to provide a free bus forpeople to attend the Irish Lobby for Immigration ReformRally March 7 in Washington, D.C.

Brendan O'Dowd, vice president of the Monroe AOH, said theopportunity to lobby members of Congress to pass theComprehensive Immigration Bill is meaningful for the Irishin Orange County as well as others throughout the nation.

The bus will leave the AOH Hall at 4:45 a.m., arriving inD.C. at 9:45 a.m. Lobbying begins at 10 a.m. on CapitolHill. The rally begins at 2 p.m. at the Holiday Inn wherethe AOH will be registered and many congressional leadersfrom both sides of the aisle will attend.

"We are not looking for an amnesty but rather an earnedpath to citizenship for these people who over the pastfive, 10 and in some cases 20 years have lived, worked andmade their lives here, just as millions of Irish did beforethem," said Jack Meehan, national president of the AOH.

In December 2004, shortly after the re-election of George WBush, former rival John McCain visited Trinity CollegeDublin to become an honorary patron of the PhilosophicalSociety. At a question and answer session in the EdmundBurke Theatre, the senior senator from Arizona wasrepeatedly invited to assure the predominantly liberalaudience that he really was one of them. For the best partof an hour, students urged him to denounce the Bushadministration, US foreign policy in general and the Iraqwar in particular.

Smilingly, McCain rebuffed them all. He was, he assuredthem patiently, ''a strong conservative'' who not onlysupported the war, but thought that far more Americantroops should be sent to Iraq.

Far from alienating his interrogators, however, theseanswers only appeared to increase their enthusiasm. McCainleft the stage to wild applause, ringing cheers andheartfelt exhortations to run for president again in 2008.

It was a remarkable performance that illustrated the man'smost important asset: even people who disagree with hispolicies find it hard not to like and admire him. In an erawhen American voters are said to be either red or blue andno colour in between, this frail but pugnacioussexagenarian straddles the divide like no other politician.It's a quality that many pundits believe is destined totake him all the way to the White House.

To get an idea of how McCain wants to be perceived, youonly have to look at the titles of his books: Character isDestiny, Why Courage Matters, American Maverick. Hepresents himself as somehow more authentic than otherpresidential candidates, an independent reformer who'sprepared to take on the reactionaries in his own party.

Last week, he launched his campaign by calling DonaldRumsfeld ''one of the worst defence secretaries inhistory'' and lamented the ''excessive influence'' wieldedover Bush by vice-president Dick Cheney.

McCain's traumatic personal history gives him thecredibility to argue that life is about more than justgrabbing what you can for yourself - it's also aboutsacrifice.

He says he intends to use the presidency as a 'bully-pulpit', just as his great hero, Theodore Roosevelt, did acentury ago. He doesn't just offer voters a better society,he invites them to pitch in and create one.

The race for the White House has begun, with McCain farahead of all Republican rivals except Rudolph Giuliani, whomay well have too much personal baggage to sustain acampaign that will last the best part of two years. Inhypothetical match-ups with Democrats, he runs neck andneck with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

In other words, McCain has as good a chance as anyone ofbeing the next president of the United States. When askedwhy he should be elected, he replies: ''I believe my lifehas prepared me with the experience and knowledge andvision to lead this country in very difficult times."

The reality, however, is that, like George W Bush beforehim, nothing about his early years suggested that he wasdestined for greatness.

Fighting is in McCain's blood. His grandfather served as afour-star admiral during the Second World War and waspresent at the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouriin 1945. His father continued the military tradition bybecoming the overall commander of US troops in the Pacificduring the Vietnam War.

McCain was born in a naval hospital in the Panama CanalZone and educated in a military academy. Despite hisheritage, however, he was a poor student and only managedto finish 894th out of a class of 899. His yearbook entrynoted that he was ''a sturdy conversationalist and partyman''.

During his early years, McCain admits, he was a terribledisappointment to his family. He developed a reputation forboozing, brawling and serial dating, including a strippernicknamed the 'Flame of Florida'.

As a naval aviator, he regularly courted danger, survivingtwo crashes and a flight deck fire that claimed the livesof 134 men.

The defining episode in McCain's life began in October1967, when his plane was shot down during a bombing raidover Hanoi. Even Americans with only a passing interest inpolitics know what happened next.

McCain landed in a lake, broke both arms and one leg, andwas beaten to the brink of death by an angry Vietnamesemob. Among other injuries, he was bayoneted in the groinand had his shoulder smashed apart by a rifle. He was thentaken to the infamous Hoa Lo prison (the 'Hanoi Hilton' ofmovie fame), where his fractures were set withoutpainkiller.

When his captors discovered who his father was, theyoffered to release him as a publicity coup. Incredibly,McCain refused to leave, on the grounds that the military'scode of honour demanded that prisoners be returned in theorder in which they were captured. Even after the guardsbroke his ribs and knocked his teeth out, he continued totell them where to go in words of one syllable.

And so he endured another four and a half years, where hewas beaten, interrogated and subjected to various forms oftorture. Most of his time was spent alone in a dark box,able to communicate with other Americans only by tapping acode on the walls.

By the time he was released in 1973, McCain was a changedman. Although he was greeted as a hero and lauded by thethen president Richard Nixon, he was curiously ashamed ofthe whole experience and admits that he regularlycontemplated suicide. He struggled to recover from hisinjuries and, to this day, cannot raise his hands above hishead.

His first wife, Carol, had not seen him for six years, andhad herself been traumatised by a terrible car accident.

McCain embarked on a series of affairs, the last one withCindy Hensley, the daughter of an Arizona beer baron(originally a Hennessy of Irish stock). They were married ayear later, one month after he divorced Carol.

McCain's wealthy and well-connected new father-in-lawoffered a gateway into Arizona's business and politicalelite. At first he toyed with a career working in PR, butsoon the political world opened up in the form of a vacantcongressional seat.

McCain won it and became a congressman in 1982, quicklyearning the nickname 'the White Tornado' (another effect ofhis ordeal in Vietnam was that his hair greyedprematurely).

In 1986, he won the Senate seat left vacant by the iconicconservative Barry Goldwater and entered the moreprestigious world of America's upper house. It is also thetraditional waiting room for a presidential bid.

As McCain himself jokes: ''If you're a United Statessenator, unless you're under investigation or in detox,you're automatically considered a candidate for president."

When he finally got around to running in 2000, he began asjust one of several minnows against the establishmentcandidate George W Bush. Gradually, however, McCain'sunorthodox campaigning propelled him to the front of thepack.

He travelled on a bus called the Straight Talk Express,where he delighted reporters by freely chatting to themabout anything they wanted. When he visited towns, heusually gave a ten-minute talk and then announced he wouldstay until he answered every question that anyone had.

McCain won a stunning victory in the New Hampshire primaryand appeared to have real momentum behind him.

In South Carolina, however, he became the victim of a dirtytricks campaign masterminded by Bush's politicalstrategist, Karl Rove. Rumours were spread that he wasmentally unstable or had fathered an illegitimate blackchild (one of his daughters was adopted from a MotherTeresa-run orphanage in Bangladesh).

McCain lost the nomination and retreated to the Senate, butmade it very clear that his presidential ambitions werevery much alive. Despite their differences, he campaignedfor Bush's re-election in 2004 and firmly refused allinvitations to switch parties and become John Kerry'srunning mate.

As Bush's second term descends into scandal, McCain hasskilfully used issues such as Abu Ghraib and HurricaneKatrina to boost his own popularity.

Within the US entertainment industry, he is widely regardedas the Republican who it's okay to like. He has hostedSaturday Night Live and makes regular appearances on theDaily Show with Jon Stewart, a news-based comedy programmethat specialises in conservative-bashing humour.

He made a brief appearance in the TV drama 24, describinghimself as ''a Jack Bauer kind of guy - like me, he'salways getting captured''.

On other occasions, his loose tongue has got him intotrouble. He has often used the racial slur ''gook'' todescribe the Vietnamese, once admitting that ''I'll hatethose bastards for as long as I live''.

On another occasion, he offended families affected bymental health when he quipped: ''The nice thing aboutAlzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs."

McCain faces two main barriers to the presidency: oneideological, the other personal. Despite his best efforts,many conservatives within the Republican party simply don'ttrust him, unable to forget that he voted against Bush'stax cuts and championed campaign finance reform.

His other problem is more fundamental. McCain will be 72 oninauguration day in 2009, which would make him the oldestpresident ever elected for the first time (Ronald Reaganwas 73 when re-elected in 1984). Although he remains anextraordinarily dynamic figure for his age, a scar on theleft side of his face serves as a reminder that he mighthave died from skin cancer five years ago, had a melanomanot been spotted in time.

Like Reagan before him, McCain has attempted to disarm theissue with humour by admitting: ''I'm as old as dirt andhave more scars than Frankenstein."

Privately, however, he must know that any stumble on thecampaign trail will be used by his opponents to suggestthat he is physically not up to the job. Already, he hasbeen upset by footage from this year's State of the Unionaddress. It appeared to show him asleep, though heprotested that he was merely looking down at the text ofthe president's speech.

What sort of president would McCain be? His bipartisanimage disguises the fact that he is by far the most hawkishof the major candidates. He says that Bush's ''surge'' oftroops into Iraq doesn't go nearly far enough, and hasspoken openly about the possibility of bombing Iran andNorth Korea.

Critics claim that he has appeared listless in recentinterviews and that the free-wheeling jokiness of his 2000campaign has gone.

McCain admits he sometimes finds campaigning boring, sayingrecently: ''I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband, whosaid on their wedding night: 'I know what to do, I justdon't know how to make it interesting.'" For now, the onlycertainty is that the Straight Talk Express is back on theroad. Only time will tell whether or not its ultimatedestination is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

A police officer and a firefighter attending a roadcollision today were themselves killed when they werestruck by a car.

By:Press Association

The families of the married men were left devastated andthe rural Co Limerick community they served plunged intogrief.

Garda Brian Kelleher (46) and firefighter Michael Liston(47) died when a car ploughed into the scene of an accidentthey were responding to on the coast road between Askeatonand Foynes.

They were called to single vehicle crash, in which no-onewas seriously injured, on the main Limerick to Listowel N69route at around 4.30am this morning.

About 15 minutes later, as they were trying to clear theroad, a car coming from the Foynes direction hit the pair.

Sergeant Vincent McCoy, of nearby Askeaton Garda Station,said the exact circumstances of the incident were yet to beestablished in a major investigation.

He said officers were in shock at the sudden loss of theircolleague, a father of three young children, originallyfrom Mallow, Co Cork.

"We can`t take it in at the moment. He will be a sore lossto us, but more so to his young family," he said.

Garda Kelleher, who was stationed at Croom, was a popularand well-liked member of the force, said Supt McCoy.

"He was very dedicated and extremely hard working," hesaid.

"We are all in extreme shock, to say the least.

"We get called out to these scenes every day and you almostbecome immune to it, but when it`s one of your colleagues,the members are extremely shocked by it."

An 18-year-old male motorist was arrested at the scene onsuspicion of drink driving.

He was later released without charge from Henry StreetGarda Station in Limerick City. A full investigation fileis being prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Tanaiste and Justice Minister Michael McDowell contactedthe Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy to offer his and thegovernment`s condolences to the bereaved family of theGarda officer.

"This tragic event, the loss of life of two emergencyworkers, is a stark reminder of the risks which people whowork for An Garda Siochana and other emergency servicestake day in, day out, in seeking to promote public safetyand to protect life," he said.

Supt McCoy said there was a rise in the number of emergencyservice workers being injured or killed during their work.

"It`s becoming more and more of a problem," he said.

The road was closed for a time between Askeaton and Foyneswhile the scene of the collision was sealed off fortechnical examination.

Gardai at Askeaton appealed for witnesses to the incidentto get in touch.

(MIDDLESEX COUNTY) -- Middlesex County Cultural andHeritage Commission and the Folklife Program for New Jerseywelcome the return of musician and vocalist Mick Moloneyfor the 13th year, at 7 pm on Wednesday, March 7, 2007, atthe Princeton Alliance Center, located at the crossroads ofScudders Mill Road and Schalks Crossing in Plainsboro. Hewill be joined by Robbie O'Connell, vocals and guitar; DanaLyn, fiddle; Tim Collins, concertina; and Niall O'Leary,step dancing, for a truly lively and spirited evening ofsoul-rousing music, droll stories and spirited dance.

As a young man in Ireland, Mick Moloney was exposed to theIrish folk music traditions that were played by legendarymaster musicians. He learned to play the traditionalinstruments and music from the Irish countryside - musicthat was passed down from generation to generation. Todayhe performs the folk music and songs from the 18th and 19thcenturies that deal with themes such as the great famine,emigration to America, the American Civil War, and thedevelopment of Irish and Irish-American music in America.

This free program is funded in part by Middlesex CountyCultural and Heritage Commission, Middlesex County Board ofChosen Freeholders, New Jersey State Council on theArts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the NationalEndowment for the Arts, and is presented in associationwith the Plainsboro Recreation Department & Arts Commission

Combining the careers of arts presenter and advocate,folklorist, and professional musician, Mick Moloney is anaccomplished singer as well as an excellent mandolin andtenor banjo player who possesses a vast storehouse of songsand instrumental pieces from the Irish and Irish-Americantradition. Mick Moloney is the author of Far From theShamrock Shore: The Story of Irish American History ThroughSong, released by Crown Publications with an accompanyingCD. He holds a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from theUniversity of Pennsylvania. He has taught ethnomusicology,folklore and Irish studies courses at the University ofPennsylvania, Georgetown, and Villanova Universities, andcurrently teaches at New York University in the IrishStudies program.

He has recorded and produced over forty albums, and hasactively participated in the great revival of Irish musicin the United States. He has hosted three nationallysyndicated series of folk music shows on American PublicTelevision; was a consultant, performer, and interviewee onBringing It All Back Home; a participant, consultant andmusic arranger in the 1994 PBS documentary film Out ofIreland; and a performer on the 1998 PBS special The Irishin America: Long Journey Home. In 1999 he was awarded theNational Heritage Award from the National Endowment for theArts - the highest official honor a traditional artist canreceive in the United States.

Mick Moloney: Traditional Irish Music, Song & Dance, isoffered free of charge; however, registration is required.If you would like to attend this Folklife program, pleasecontact the Commission, 732.745.4489. Persons with hearingdisabilities may call 732.745.3888 (TTY users only), or711, the New Jersey Relay System. The Princeton AllianceCenter is an accessible site. An Assistive Listening Systemwill be in use during the program. An American SignLanguage interpreter is available with a two-week advancerequest.

The Folklife Program for New Jersey was instituted in 1990to broaden the appreciation and availability of folk arts,folklore and folklife within Middlesex County; identify andpreserve folk traditions expressed by the people of CentralNew Jersey; provide a forum for the presentation of NewJersey and regional folk artists, recognized by theircommunity for their excellence; and encourage publicinvolvement in the folk arts through educationalprogramming and cross-cultural exchange.

This exceptionally thoughtful and interesting inquiry intoIrish America, Peter Quinn writes, "is tentative,subjective and personal." Though it reaches certain broadjudgments and conclusions about the Irish Americanexperience, and though it draws heavily on the work ofothers who have written about that endlessly interestingsubject, its primary source is Quinn and his family:

"The views and values it reflects were formed in the Bronx-based religious schools I attended from kindergartenthrough graduate school. A full account of the Irish inAmerica would include the Protestant Scot-Irish and themany Catholics who settled outside cities. As worthy astheir subjects are, they are not part of my tale. The IrishAmerica of my search is the one into which I was born -- acohesive urban Catholic community constructed from apeasantry fragmented, transplanted, transformed and definedby the Great Famine and its consequences."

The city and the famine: These are the central themes ofQuinn's study. Carefully argued and handsomely written --though marred by infrequent and inexplicable grammaticallapses -- Looking for Jimmy is more a meditation than ahistory, and thus does not displace William V. Shannon'sinvaluable The American Irish: A Political and SocialPortrait (1964), which remains a standard reference. Butlapses notwithstanding, Quinn is a better writer thanShannon, and he digs deeper.

Quinn is a novelist and speechwriter -- for two governorsof New York, Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, and for bigcheeses at Time Warner -- who "was born in 1947, inGreenport, on the northeast end of Long Island, exactly acentury after my first Paddy ancestor set foot in America."His father and namesake had just been defeated forreelection as Democratic congressman from the Bronx, andthe family was vacationing when Peter and his twin brotherwere born. The family got back to the city as soon aspossible, and Quinn has lived there for most of the ensuingsix decades. He is an urbanite to the core, and a proudIrish American one.

"If there is any central theme in the story of the Irish inAmerica," he writes, "it is . . . how they stayed Irish:how an immigrant group already under punishing cultural andeconomic pressures, reeling in the wake of the worstcatastrophe in western Europe in the nineteenth century,and plunged into the fastest industrializing society in theworld, regrouped as quickly as it did; built its own far-flung network of charitable and educational institutions;preserved its own identity; and had a profound influence onthe future of both the country it left and the one it cameto."

Today the Irish are so thoroughly assimilated into thelarger American society that it is difficult for anyone toremember how harshly and unforgivingly they were greeted asthey arrived in the great wave that began in the mid-1840sand lasted for a decade, but white America equated themwith blacks and stereotyped them accordingly as "childlikebuffoons, lazy, superstitious, given to doubletalk,inflated rhetoric, and comic misuse of proper English."

For African Americans and the Irish alike, "the stereotypebecame so ingrained in popular attitudes and perceptionsthat it passed from being regarded as a theatrical parodyto a predeterminant of group behavior." Blacks were calledSambo, while Irish were stereotyped as Paddy. Gradually,though, Paddy evolved into what Quinn calls Jimmy, a blendof New York's flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker and JimmyCagney, "the actor-hoofer with the looks of a prize-fighterlucky enough never to have had his face smashed in." Jimmy"expressed the style of the urban Irish in its definitiveform. These Jimmies had the blend of musicality and menace,of nattiness and charm, of verbal agility and ironicsensibility, of what today is known as 'street smarts,'that the Irish, as New York's first immigrant outsiders,had developed."

They achieved this after overcoming circumstances so direas to defy description or comprehension. On the subject ofthe famine, Quinn again is descriptive rather thandefinitive -- the latter distinction belongs to CecilWoodham-Smith's The Great Hunger: The Story of the PotatoFamine of the 1840s (1962) -- but he fully evokes theterrible pain and horror it inflicted on millions ofpeople, and he shows how those who fled Ireland for America"began the process of recovering from the shatteringexperience of the Famine, of unbending from the defensivecrouch it had forced them into, of building a new identityin America that preserved their deep sense of being Irishas it prepared them to compete in a country in which thehostility they faced was interwoven with possibilities foradvancement that had never existed before."

White Anglo-Saxons who regarded themselves as "nativeAmericans" gave the newcomers a frosty welcome. In Boston,employers famously posted signs that read: "No Irish NeedApply." Irish women, who outnumbered men, "worked infactories and mills. Irish maids became a fixture ofbourgeois American life. Domestic service became soassociated with the Irish that maids often were referred togenerically as 'Kathleens' or 'Bridgets,' " just as blackrailroad porters were universally, and equallypatronizingly, called "George."

Politics proved to be the key to Irish assimilation, thoughcertainly not in a way of which the Brahmins approved. InNew York, Tammany Hall emerged as the great engine of Irishadvancement. Viewed with disgust by Anglos of most classes,but especially by reformers and aristos, Tammany did indeedwallow in corruption, but, more important, it "was aboutpractical things: about jobs, bread, influence; about theneighborhood kid who needed a lawyer; about the fees paid asubcontractor; and about the hundred cases of champagne andtwo hundred kegs of beer waiting in the basement of theHall for those who endured five hours of July Fourthspeechifying." Tammany was practical, unromantic andeffective; Quinn correctly concludes that "for all itsexcesses, for all its thievery and knavery, Tammanyafforded the poor what the rich and well-off had deniedthem throughout history: respect."

The other institution that gave aid, comfort and support tothe Irish was the Catholic Church. Quinn, who was raised aCatholic, went through a brief period of collegiateapostasy and then returned to the fold, laments what hashappened to the church and the priesthood after "theprolonged season of ugly revelations of sexual misconduct"but does not let that cloud his memory of the church inwhich he was reared: "The environment was sexuallypuritanical, ritually demanding, and often stultifying. Itwas also intensely comforting and secure, liturgicallyrich, a culture of moral absolutes, theologicalcertainties, and religious devotions in which the answersto all life's questions were readily at hand." Quinn offersa surprisingly revisionist view of Cardinal Spellman, whoseearly and faithful support for civil rights he emphasizesmore strongly than the cardinal's fondness for politicalmeddling and his rigid approach to some moral issues.

In America, the Irish elevated the church "from aningredient in Irish life to its center, the bulwark of aculture that had lost its language and almost disintegratedbeneath the catastrophe of the Famine." The Irish"translated their numbers into control of the Democraticparty in the major cities and turned municipal patronageinto an immediate and pragmatic method for softening theravages of boom-and-bust capitalism." They were "primeparticipants in the often intertwined professions ofpolitics, entertainment, sports (along with its lessreputable sister, gambling), as well as a major part of thelocal criminal underworld (which was not infrequently anally of the local political machine)."

Like African Americans, Irish Americans have madecontributions of incalculable dimensions to Americansociety and culture. They changed and enriched thelanguage, gave us our greatest playwright (Eugene O'Neill),some of our finest writers (Flannery O'Connor, F. ScottFitzgerald, Alice McDermott, William Kennedy) and ourgreatest movie director, John Ford, one of the "masterinterpreters of the [American] dream." Now they have givenus, in this fine book, a way to help us understand them,and thus ourselves. ?